Target 3

Measures

• Number of First Nations children enrolled in year before fulltime schooling, by remoteness area.


• Proportion (%) of First Nations children enrolled in year before fulltime schooling, by sex and over time.


• Proportion (%) of First Nations children enrolled in year before fulltime schooling, over time.

Available by

• Sex: males, females, persons.


• Remoteness Area: remote, non-remote.


• Index of Relative Socio-economic Disadvantage (IRSD) (AUS only): quintiles from most disadvantaged to least disadvantaged.

Data periods

• 2023


• Time trend data: 5-year period (2019 to 2023)

Data source

ABS Preschool Education and ABS Schools data (ABS 2025a, 2025c).

Region types

Main structures: Australia, states and territories.

Suppression

Measure based on publicly available data with no further suppression rules applied.

Notes

• Methodology for estimating the number of First Nations in YBFS cohort differs from the methodology used to calculate the official Closing the Gap reporting for this target (AIHW 2025a).
  
  
  
  • Numerator - First Nations children in each state and territory who are currently enrolled in preschool who are in their ‘last year’ of preschool (that is, YBFS). Data source is Preschool Education, Australia which is are collected through then National Early Childhood Education and Care Collection (NECECC) (ABS 2025a, 2025b).
  
  
  • Denominator - number of children who are in their first year of primary school in each calendar year and assigning them as the YBFS cohort in the previous calendar year, or the number of children in their first year of school in 2023 are assumed to be the YBFS cohort for 2022. Data source is the National School Statistics Collection (Schools data) which is a collection of data on students, schools and staff involved in the provision or administration of primary and secondary education (in government and non-government schools) for all Australian states and territories (ABS 2025c).
  
  
  • For more information on methods, refer to ‘Appendix 3B: measuring preschool enrolment’ in the Closing the Gap targets: key findings and implications report.
  
  
  
  


• Remoteness Areas are defined by the Australian Statistical Geographical Standard (ASGS) and based on the Accessibility/Remoteness Index of Australia which uses the road distance to goods and services (such as general practitioners, hospitals and specialist care) to measure relative accessibility of regions around Australia (ABS 2023b).


• Remote areas include Very remote, remote and out regional areas, and non-remote areas include Major cities and inner regional areas.


• IRSD quintile analysis based on ABS IRSD 2021 which focuses on relative socio-economic disadvantage, using SA1 as the building block. Data are reported by IRSD quintile that are determined at the Australian level and exclude children with unknown or unavailable SEIFA score (ABS 2023c).